I’ve been working on this project for 13 months now, and here is the last song of Triskaidekaphile. I tried to combine a lot of production techniques and instruments that I used on previous tracks on the album. I had a lot of time to develop themes for this song but my favorite moments in it came in a rush the night before I sat down to mix.

It’s bittersweet posting the last one of these.
Thank you all very much for your support and for listening.

Look out for a packaged and potentially physical release of all these songs in the near future.

This one is the penultimate song I’ll be doing for Triskaidekaphile. It’s odd to think that I’ve been working on this project for exactly one year now. I’ve certainly learned a lot about myself and my creative process My thought that sticking to deadlines would spur creativity in me has turned out to be true. One more of these and then I plan on releasing some older songs and things I’ve been doing on the side.

When I started this song, the only thing I had in mind what that i wanted it to be slower than some of the recent pieces. I worried that a few of them were starting to sound formulaic, and I wanted to resist that. It has similarities in rhythm, in title, and in the cover design with ‘bridges burning’, and I’m happy with that coincidence.

This song was written and recorded in just a handful of intense late night sessions in various hotels far away from my actual studio. Because of this, I didn’t have the benefit of all of my usual gear. What arose of this was quite an inventive (I think) makeshift studio, a hodgepodge of small portable instruments and software-synthesizers. Among these, you’ll here beats from Figure, a Korg Monotron, and some additional drum layers played live on an iPad.

Much of the material for this song, or at least the basic ideas, came out of a ‘C’ part that I had been developing for last month’s release, Augury. The bells you’ll hear are were played in one or two really long takes and then were cut down, duplicated, warped, and changed in various ways. I was feeling particularly inspired that night and want to try to replicate that.

This song took shape in over the course of only about a week, Most of this consisted of sound design and developing a wide array of complementary patterns. I only started the initial arrangement the night before the release. There is something wonderful about having a deadline for something creative. Had I not been sticking to my schedule I would have easily sat with this song for months agonizing over minute details. It’s liberating to finish with an idea so soon after beginning it. I would estimate that 80% of the sounds in this track came directly off of the Tempest, live, with very little quantization or post processing. The loons appear courtesy of freesound.org user, laurent.

This song marks the halfway-point of this project. The pattern I’ve recognized in the past few months of releases has been one of consistent contrast, in tempo and mood, and while I’ve embraced it here, I think I may approach the last six tracks from a different perspective. It’s very and immediately gratifying to me to write a compelling melody and throw a breakbeat behind it. Some interesting things might come out of consciously resisting that impulse. Here though, I’ve satisfied it. This song, to me envokes that pull towards the urgent resonance one might feel with a sound or a place.

This song started on the tempest, building layers and sounds from a very minimal starting point. I played live through a ‘prototype’ version of the entire arrangement, including some of the glitched out drum patterns and chords, and recorded the parts individually into the computer. I started with the mind to make a song with a much different feel which is why I reached for the vocoder, but by the time it came to track some vocals, the parts had taken on a much darker life of their own.

This month I spend quite a lot of time generating musical ideas, which then all came together rather quickly as the deadline approached. Much of this took place in hotel rooms in unfamiliar parts of the country as I have been traveling a lot lately. It felt good to come home and sit down in my own studio with a lot of material to draw from to piece together the whole. May stuck in my head as a title not only in reference to the month, but also to the sense of ability and possibility which I feel in this new season.

This song goes in many directions at once; from brooding and mysterious to heroic and uplifting. It is a reflection of my varied tastes, simultaneously aggressive and melodic. This track was a chance for me to pay homage to some of my favorite genres and moods, and to experiment with the historic and unmistakable ‘Amen Break’ for the first time.